I am learning – with more irritation than surprise – that corporate America is keeping track of my life and yours, too, chiefly for the purpose of lifting money from my wallet.
A few months ago, for example, my daughter and ex were driving to Michigan from Kentucky, and for reasons I now forget, they had to leave late. In a peculiar moment of cooperation, I got on the computer and found the address, phone number, and rates of a Red Roof Inn about two-thirds in this direction. I sent this to my daughter in a text, offering to make a reservation.
My reward? I endured a month of web ads all devoted to Red Roof Inn. They appeared top right on many sites I frequent, such as Yahoo and Intellicast. They disappeared, a bit to my surprise, after I ordered a cordless drill from Harbor Freight Tools. I then suffered a couple weeks of advertisements for the very same product I ordered, which seems like idiocy on their part. I already had the damn drill. How many am I likely to buy?
The whole idea that my Internet usage triggered an annoying commotion of ads, however, bothered my sense of privacy. It still does, though I know the notion of privacy today is as outmoded as eight-track tapes. The aggravation with linking me to various products eventually morphs into something akin to apprehension when you come to understand that, given enough broad information, someone could put together an interesting profile. Add some clever and insightful work – read this “work” as software – and corporate America can generate something better than a sketch.
This is nothing new. Guesswork does not initiate those store-based coupons your grocery provides at checkout. The store’s computer keeps track of what you buy with your credit or debit card. The store might know your shopping habits better than you do. If you regularly buy cans of dog food, for instance, you might get a coupon for $2 off a specific brand of dry dog food. Enjoy donuts but only buy two? The store makes more money if it provides a $1 coupon for a dozen from the grocery’s bakery. This is not guesswork. It is judicious marketing expanding on the already existing thread of purchasing.
While it is nothing new, it is growing. Today we learned the smartphone you carry around records everything you type into the keyboard and the time, duration, and location of every phone call you make and receive. It sends the information nowhere, they say. Sure, the gadget’s makers say this information makes the phones work better and the system smarter because it can anticipate what you do and save time. They probably mean that. For the most part, these companies cannot use this information well enough yet to profit by it on a mass scale.
But that is now. What about the future? I am not talking about 20 years; I am talking about a year or two. All this pent up information in smart phones combined and mixed with all that pent up information in your laptop and web browser providers soon will be a minable commodity. You can bet your Tea Bag membership card someone has already figured out how to excavate that digital ore and fashion useful marketing tools – again, to rescue money from your wallet.
The problems are these: Today you have no choice in the matter. You cannot tell your phone to lose its memory. The digital tools available to most of us do not control what your Internet browser and site visits can tell potential marketers. Although much of what you do today cannot be held in strict privacy, you have every right to limit these encroachments on your life and maintain some sense of privacy. Corporate America, as it has for well over 100 years when the “mass market” first emerged, will tell us that its marketing procedures are benign and merely an innocent part of doing business, if not also a Constitutional right of free speech. These nice, sweet people – church deacons in their communities – just want to send us ads that interest us. Sure they do.
It is one thing for me to voluntarily leave clues about my buying preferences or to directly provide my inclinations. It is another for corporate America to use incidental or accidental information.
The last thing marketers want is to sell you something based chiefly on the product’s merits. That’s the old way of selling, and it is so yesterday. They would rather cheat, in a sense, and sell junk to you based on your inclinations, not the product’s value. That’s so tomorrow.
